Political Television Ads in the 2018 Italian Elections: An Analysis of Strategies, Genre, Styles and Issues used by Political Parties

2018 Italian Elections can be considered as a turning point not only for the “unexpected” results, but also because – after a period of instability with the succession of some technical Governments, that can’t be viewed as an expression of the popular will – Italians returned to express their preference. Despite it is really difficult to understanding this campaign, we can argue that the success of Movimento 5 Stelle and Lega Nord, two anti-establishment parties in spite of they are now totally engage into the traditional political space, is due to the presence of both a deep mistrust sentiment of the voters and a desire to “break” with the long standing political forces, as Forza Italia, Partito Democratico and +Europa. These results seem to be caused more by a diffuse popular discontent than by a rational analysis of the political program shown by political parties: a condition that has increased the contrast and the polarization between political forces. It is not surprising if propaganda activities have acquired a great importance into the “election war”: each political party should have been able to persuade and convince each individual voter more than the opponents. In this context, it is very interesting to observe the political advertising strategies used in the 2018 election campaign: we have decided to analyze the television ads realized by political parties which have overtaken the 3% threshold introduced by the new electoral law. Through the syncretic use of content analysis and semiotics, we can observe the genre, styles, languages and issues most used by different political parties in their audiovisual contents in order to involve and persuade voters.